Top officials told this isn't 'a game' after dodging details on RAAC in schools
A furious Labour MP tore into top education officials who refused to reveal the number of schools that still need checking for dodgy concrete. Dame Meg Hillier told civil servants at the Department for Education “we are not playing a game” after they repeatedly dodged questions from MPs on reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC).
The DfE’s permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood and its chief operating officer Jane Cunliffe said they have completed more than 600 surveys of schools, which are suspected of having RAAC, to confirm whether there is an issue. But they refused to tell MPs on the Public Accounts Committee the number of outstanding surveys, only saying the department had “several more” in the pipeline.
They explained they have increased the number of surveying firms used by the DfE from three to eight, suggesting the number could be fairly large. Ms Cunliffe admitted: “I think the fact that we have increased the surveying capacity so much indicates that we do have several to get through in the next few weeks.”
But a frustrated Dame Meg, who is chair of the committee, said: “‘Several’ sounds to me like single digits. We're not playing a game here. I don't understand what the problem is with telling us, even if it's a ballpark figure… when you say several do you mean single digits, tens, hundreds?”
Ms Cunliffe said it's a “very fast moving situation”, adding: “I don’t want to give an exact figure…We are also very careful about giving figures in a managed way so that we can manage the situation. In about two-thirds of surveys we’ve done, we haven’t found RAAC and so we also want to be careful of not expanding the problem broader than it is. We will survey everyone who suspects they have got RAAC but at the moment we’re finding about a third have confirmed RAAC out of those surveys we do.”
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After being pressed on the timeframe of surveys, Ms Acland-Hood said they are getting through “several hundreds a week”. Asked if the ones they haven’t done could therefore be several hundreds, Ms Cunliffe added: “We are getting through those over the next few weeks.”
At the end of the evidence session, Dame Meg bluntly said: “We're more than a bit disappointed - disappointed is politely putting it - that you came without numbers on some of these issues today.”
Schools are required to take an initial questionnaire to say whether they suspect they have RAAC. A follow-up survey is then carried out within the next few weeks to confirm whether there is RAAC or not. The officials said some 98% of schools have now completed the first questionnaire. Around 2,000 schools are still yet to complete it, which means the number of schools suspected of RAAC and who need a second survey is expected to increase.
The DfE has already come under fire after it decided to shut or partly close more than 100 schools just days before the start of term. A long-awaited list of affected schools included details for 147 education settings in England where mitigations had to be put in place to deal with collapse-prone concrete. Pupils at 24 schools were listed as receiving some remote learning, including four schools switching to fully remote learning. Another 19 schools have had to delay the start of term.
Officials were today also unable to provide a figure for the number of mobile classrooms it has provided to affected schools.
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